


No Friends

by Nwar



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Boarding School, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s02e02 The Hounds of Baskerville, Friendship, M/M, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-03 15:17:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19466674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nwar/pseuds/Nwar
Summary: John asks why Sherlock said he has no friends.





	No Friends

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry, I haven't watched the Hounds of Baskerville in so long so this is canon-divergent based on timeline alone.

“I don’t have friends!”   
John felt his blood boil with something more than anger at the man he considered his best friend. Some form of indignation, or wrath. Either way, he retreated to the double bedroom with haste, stomping the entire way.   
It was well past midnight when Sherlock came back to the room, but John was still awake. He was lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling. His temper had cooled, leaving only the wounds inflicted by Sherlock’s words.   
“John, I… I’m sorry.” Sherlock’s voice was rote, like he’d rehearsed before opening the door. “I didn’t mean what I said, down there, truly. I am very… affected by this case. More than ever before, and I need you to know I’m not angry or upset with you.”  
After a few moments of John’s silence, Sherlock retreated to the bathroom to wash himself before sleep, and returned in his striped pajama pants and a plain tee shirt.   
“Why?”   
Sherlock jumped, and, in the light of the moon through the window, John could see his confused expression. “Why?”   
“Why don’t you have other friends,” John said in a hard tone, refusing to meet Sherlock’s gaze.   
Sherlock snorted as he peeled back the sheets to the other bed. “You know me, John, how many people do you imagine want to be friends with me?”   
“Molly, Mrs.Hudson, Greg, Mycroft--” Sherlock snorted again. “Maybe not Mycroft, but Sherlock,” John turned on his side to look at Sherlock’s profile in the window’s pale light. “You’re brilliant and downright endearing sometimes. If you let people see that side more often, you’d be surprised how many people would jump at the opportunity to be friends with you.”   
Sherlock shook his head, his nose appearing and disappearing in the square of light. “No, they wouldn’t, John. Trust me, I have been well disabused of the notion that people want to befriend me.”   
“I did.”   
“You’re different.”  
“How?”   
Sherlock sighed heavily. “I don’t know, you just… you bring out the best in me. My conductor of light,” He chuckled lightly. “You… perhaps you’re stronger. Can tolerate more than most.”   
“You’re not someone to be tolerated, Sherlock,” John sighed. “Why are you so hard on yourself?”   
“Believe me, I am to be tolerated and nothing more. You are an exception to a nearly life-long rule of repelling others.”   
They were both silent for a moment. John watched Sherlock’s long eyelashes start to flutter down on his profile.   
“Nearly?”   
“Hmm?”   
“You said a nearly life-long rule. What about before this rule, that you don’t have friends?”   
Sherlock tensed. Even in the dark room, John could tell his whole body seized with anxiety.   
“It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me,” John said softly.   
“No, it’s probably for the best that you know,” Sherlock said, leaning out of bed to flip on the lamp between them, and folding himself cross legged near his pillow. In the cheap lightbulb’s glow, he looked ten years younger. Like a child at summer camp.   
John himself sat up in bed, and leaned against the headboard. “Okay. Tell me why you made this rule to not have friends.”   
Sherlock looked at the floor for a moment, contemplating. John gave him time. “I suppose a fair story would start at my birth, but I’ll skim for time. I was a happy, friendly, contented child. Smiled at everyone, waitresses fawned over me, et cetera et cetera. I was tutored at home until the age of fourteen, where I was sent to a boarding school to socialize myself.”   
“Boarding schools still exist?” John blurted.   
“Surely you can tell by now that I come from a… comfortable family.”   
John nodded. He knew code for rich when he heard it.   
“So, happy, sweet, friendly little simpering boy goes off to boarding school,” Sherlock resumed. John felt his stomach tensing. He didn’t know how much he truly wanted to hear of Sherlock being ruthlessly bullied. “I was popular-- friends, good grades, I played polo. The charisma I use now to entice clients to reveal the truth, I used then to make… friends.”   
John chastised himself for automatically assuming the worst, but continued listening.   
“There was one boy that stood out, though. His name was Victor. Being with him felt as comfortable as breathing, we never hurt each other, it often felt like we shared one soul between two bodies.”   
John didn’t say anything, but Sherlock read his thoughts across his face. “No, it wasn’t a… romantic relationship. He was straight, and I never desired him in any way beyond friendship.”   
John nodded, Sherlock readjusted his long limbs as he stalled.   
“We were with each other every single day. We didn’t share a room, but we talked at every break, and were on the same team. The teachers started referring to us as ‘the twins’-- inseparable, and so similar. But of course, boarding school sends their students home for the summer. I wrote to Victor every week over the summer, using the then-new phenomenon of email.”   
John chuckled wryly. “God, we are old farts aren’t we?”   
Sherlock smiled briefly in response, but quickly continued his tale. “Yes, well, I sent him emails every week, with every detail and complaint and minutiae of everyday life at the Holmes house. My emails were maybe a thousand words each.”   
John whistled lowly. Sherlock nodded again.   
“He didn’t write as often, and didn’t include as much. I knew his family had plans for holiday over the summer, so I wasn’t concerned. I suppose I should’ve been more conscious of it, but like I said, we were very good friends, and I didn’t feel any anxiety around him at all.  
“The summer ended, we returned to school. I barely saw Victor that first day, but I, again, naively, assumed he was simply busy. He proceeded to avoid me for a week. Finally, when I was sat under a tree in the schoolyard reading, he approached me.”   
Sherlock paused, looking at his own hands with a bittersweet smile. “I really was so naive. All I felt when I saw him was excitement. I didn’t care what had transpired that made him stay away from me, I was simply eager to see him again and go back to being as easy as breathing.”   
John felt his stomach flip. He knew the worst was approaching.   
Sherlock sighed, as if trying to compose himself. “Victor said to me, “I’ve been avoiding you for a week, did you not notice or just not care?”.  
I told him, “I thought you just wanted to be left alone for a bit.”   
“He was mad. Very mad. And for the life of me, at fifteen, I couldn’t understand why.”   
John wanted desperately to reach across the beds and take Sherlock’s hand, but he knew it would only end badly. “Go on.”   
“He said that receiving my emails was-- exhausting, to him. To read everything I sent him. He told me he didn’t need or want to know everything that happened in my life, and that I should’ve realized that.”   
John moved from the headboard to sit upright and face Sherlock, who was now quite clearly fighting back tears.   
“He said that people didn’t like me, that I always spoke down to him and everyone else. That I acted superior, but I didn’t really know anything. He told me… He showed me, that if I were to be myself, no person in their right mind would be friends with me for any length of time.”   
John felt his blood heating again. “He was wrong.”   
Sherlock waved his hand to dismiss it. “No, he was right. My friends dropped away like flies. As soon as I got tired of holding up my charm and tricking people into thinking I’m a good person, they left. I’m selfish, I’m self-centered. It’s true, what he said.”   
Sherlock took a deep, gurgling breath. “So I decided, no more. If anyone can hurt me that much, I won’t make more friends. It would be so easy, I thought, since he’d said that I’m naturally repellent. I exhaust people.”   
Sherlock looked up at me, his eyes and cheeks wet. “I didn’t even try to-- talk to anyone, before I met you. Everyone around me had a use, and I used them, and then when they grew tired of me, they left. I’ve grown more used to leaving than to staying. And I’m telling you this now, so that when the time comes that you grow to resent me, to hate me, to want no more of me-- that you’ll know why. And that you’re perfectly justified.”   
John took a deep breath. He felt wet pressure behind his own eyes, from hearing Sherlock.   
“Let me get this right,” John said, and Sherlock’s head snapped up at the anger in his voice. “One sniveling little shit in high school tells you he thinks you’re snobby and you’ll never have friends, and you took it entirely to heart? You refused any possibility of friendship for the next twenty years, because this Victor told you that you don’t deserve it?”   
Sherlock leaned back on his arms. “Well, no. The proof is in the pudding, rather. I haven’t had friends, no friends have… abandoned me. It was a neat way to avoid all possibility of being betrayed again.”   
John shook his head. “No, no Sherlock. That’s not how it works. Yes, friends leave, yes, people change. But avoiding it all entirely-- haven’t you ever heard ‘better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’?”  
Sherlock shook his head, “But I’ve never had to lose again. I’ve made it just fine on my own. If I needed someone for a two man job, I had a colleague to help me. If I needed… physical affection, I found establishments for that.”  
John shook his head. “No. Drugs and prostitutes do not friends replace.”   
Sherlock shrugged, looking intensely uncomfortable. “Anyway. Now you know why.”   
He made to lay back down, when John stood and grabbed him by the shoulder to bring him to standing.   
John wrapped his arms tenderly around Sherlock’s waist, and buried his face in his chest. Sherlock, bewildered, hesitated before gently laying his arms on John’s back. John readjusted, holding him tighter, pouring as much love and affection as he could into the embrace. It wouldn’t be enough to make up for twenty years, but it was enough for now. They were both wet-eyed when he pulled away.   
“Sherlock, I won’t grow tired of you. I may get irritated occasionally, when you leave toes in the microwave or forget me at a crime scene, but I won’t resent you. I’ve known you for a year, and I know I want to know you for the rest of my life. Even if I go on holiday, even if I get married, even if I move out of Baker street, I want to know you. Because you’re my best friend.”   
Sherlock nodded, his lip quivering. “Thank you, my dear John.”   
“I mean it. I’m not being nice. You know I’m not nice,” John raised his eyebrows.   
“You’re the nicest person I know,” Sherlock said.   
“You know what I mean. I truly and actually want you. No matter what.”   
Sherlock blinked rapidly, and John could tell he was saving the information somewhere in his mind palace.   
“Now, let’s go to bed. Have to go hunt that hound tomorrow.” Sherlock nodded, still quiet, and laid down in his bed.   
Once John was in his, he turned out the light and they laid there in the dark together. John was almost asleep when he heard a quiet whisper in the dark.   
“I want you, too, John. Always.”   
He didn’t respond, but smiled and drifted off to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this as a cathartic practice since a very good friend of mine recently said things very similar to this to me.


End file.
